It looks like for some athletes genuine sportsmanship and Olympic camaraderie are taking a back seat to hostility and political intrigues.

Some US and British athletes are refusing to shake hands with their Russian colleagues taking part in the Winter Olympics in South Korea's Pyeongchang, Russian skeleton athlete Nikita Tregubov has told Sport Express.

He said that this is exactly the kind of attitude Russian athletes had earlier experienced during the skeleton World Cup in January. He also sees political undertones behind the Western athletes' hostile behavior.

In December 2017, the International Olympic Committee handed down lifetime disqualifications for a number of Russian athletes for their alleged use of banned substances during the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi.

Later, most of the sanctioned Russian athletes were either fully or partially cleared by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), but the IOC still refused to send out invitations for the exonerated Russian athletes to come to Pyeongchang.